Comment by ncasenmare

Comment by ncasenmare 3 days ago

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> You’re cherry picking papers.

I just picked the most recent meta-analysis I could find, which also specifically estimates the dose-response curve. (Since averaging the effect at 400 IU and 4000 IU doesn't make sense.)

> Others have already shared other studies showing no significant effects of Vitamin D intervention.

Yes, and the Ghaemi et al 2024 meta-analysis addresses the methodological problems in those earlier meta-analyses. (For example, they average the effects at vastly varying doses from 400 IU and 4000 IU)

> According your numbers, taking Tylenol would be worse than placebo alone! 0.4 vs 0.7

No, I understand this fine. Taking Tylenol would give you active medication + placebo + time, which is 0.4 + 0.7 + X > *1.1.* Taking open-label placebo is just placebo + time = *0.7* + X.

(Edit: Also, these aren't "my" numbers. They're from a major peer-reviewed study published in Nature, the highest-impact journal. I don't like "hey look at the credentials here", but I bring it up to note I'm not anti-science, see below paragraph)

===

Stepping back, I suspect the broader concern you have is you (correctly!) see that supplement/nutrition research is sketchy & full of grifters. And at the current moment, it seems to play into the hands of anti-establishment anti-science types. I agree, and I'll try to edit the tone of the article to avoid that.

That said, there still is some good science (among the crap), and I think the better evidence is accumulating (at least for Vitamin D) that it's on par with traditional antidepressants, possibly more. I agree that much larger trials are required.

svara 3 days ago

> They're from a major peer-reviewed study published in Nature, the highest-impact journal.

No, the domain name is nature.com because it's in a Nature Publishing Group journal, Scientific Reports, which is their least prestigious journal.

It's a common mistake, and they do that on purpose, of course, to leverage the Nature brand.

It's also a mistake that implies a complete lack of familiarity with scientific publishing, unfortunately, which makes it a bit difficult to take your judgements regarding plausibility very seriously.

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  • directevolve 3 days ago

    It’s less prestigious because it doesn’t judge papers on novelty, only on technical accuracy. For incremental research like this, it is an appropriate choice. The lower prestige has no bearing on the accuracy of their findings.

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  • MRtecno98 2 days ago

    > It's also a mistake that implies a complete lack of familiarity with scientific publishing, unfortunately, which makes it a bit difficult to take your judgements regarding plausibility very seriously.

    It's still peer reviewed, and as the sibling comment said, more applicable to this type of research. Also you now went from raising understandable objections to refusing the argument because it comes from a specific journal, which doesn't sound very scientific to me

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    • svara 2 days ago

      You're right it isn't fair to reject someone's scientific argument just because they seem unfamiliar with how professional science works.

      We shouldn't have believed the study more if it actually had been in Nature.

      I don't think that's what I was saying, though.

      The issue in this thread was about taking a step back and looking at the overall plausibility of the conclusions, taking together multiple studies.

      I agree with the GP that the argument doesn't really pass the smell test.

      That's still the main issue, and it is something that people who don't understand scientific publishing struggle understanding/doing, because they lack the intuition for how certain results came about.

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keybrd-intrrpt 3 days ago

Hello, there is another study that might be relevant to you

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28768407/

> A statistical error in the estimation of the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for vitamin D was recently discovered

> ... This could lead to a recommendation of 1000 IU for children <1 year on enriched formula and 1500 IU for breastfed children older than 6 months, 3000 IU for children >1 year of age, and around 8000 IU for young adults and thereafter.

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